lad's face.

"A sausage with paws, I! A sausage with paws, I!" repeated the coachman,
choking with rage, while his innocent victim was being carried into the
adjoining room, where the ladies and girls found occupation in bathing
his nose. The disturbance was quickly appeased, thanks to our arrival,
thanks also to the wise words of M. Barreau, a middle-aged man, sedate
and majestic, with a manner resembling my own. He is the Nabob's cook,
a former _chef_ of the Cafe Anglais, whom Cardailhac, the manager of
the Nouveautes, has procured for his friend. To see him in a dress-coat,
with white tie, his handsome face full and clean-shaven, you would have
taken him for one of the great functionaries of the Empire. It is true
that a cook in an establishment where the table is set every morning
for thirty persons, in addition to madame's special meal, and all eating
only the very finest and most delicate of food, is not the same as the
ordinary preparer of a _ragout_. He is paid the salary of a colonel,
lodged, boarded, and then the perquisites! One has hardly a notion
of the extent of the perquisites in a berth like this. Every one
consequently addressed him respectfully, with the deference due to a man
of his importance. "M. Barreau" here, "My dear M. Barreau" there. For
it is a great mistake to imagine that servants among themselves are all
cronies and comrades. Nowhere do you find a hierarchy more prevalent
than among them. Thus at M. Noel's party I distinctly noticed that the
coachmen did not fraternize with their grooms, nor the valets with the
footmen and the lackeys, any more than the steward or the butler would
mix with the lower servants; and when M. Barreau emitted any little
pleasantry it was amusing to see how exceedingly those under his orders
seemed to enjoy it. I am not opposed to this kind of thing. Quite on
the contrary. As our oldest member used to say, "A society without
a hierarchy is like a house without a staircase." The observation,
however, seems to me one worth setting down in these memoirs.

The party, I need scarcely say, did not shine with its full splendour
until after the return of its most beauteous ornaments, the ladies and
girls who had gone to nurse the little Tom, ladies'-maids with shining
and pomaded hair, chiefs of domestic departments in bonnets adorned with
ribbons, negresses, housekeepers, a brilliant assembly in which I was
immediately given great prestige, thanks to my dignified bearing